Practice Accelerator is a set of planning and technical resources introduced with training via Microsoft Live Meeting.  Practice Accelerator is designed to help you shorten your time-to-market when deploying Microsoft based solutions.  Leveraging the tools and resources provided by Practice Accelerator, you will be able to increase revenue streams for their business and enhance their market positioning. Practice Accelerator presents you with a detailed framework to help you navigate each stage of a customer engagement from pre-engagement to post-delivery. Additionally, Practice Accelerator provides a set of reusable resources that you can use to successfully identify customer requirements and project scope, analyze customer needs, plan solution requirements, and deploy a solution.

Practice Accelerator sessions are currently available for:

• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
• Server Virtualization with Advanced Management
• Desktop Optimization Using Windows and Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
• Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite Standard

To learn more about Practice Accelerator, visit the Partner Technical Services Blog.

The Services Ready blog will be decommissioned on May 1 2011.

Microsoft has designed the Optimized Desktop campaign to increase market momentum by accelerating the customer deployment of the Windows® 7 Enterprise operating system, Microsoft® Office Professional Plus 2010, Internet Explorer® 8, and the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).  To help customers better understand and build confidence around the migration process to the Optimized Desktop, we recommend they complete an early deployment project to initiate their exploration and determine their potential productivity, efficiency, and cost benefits.

The Offers and Goals

Microsoft has developed two engagement offerings that partners and MCS can deliver. These offerings help prove the value of the Optimized Desktop and motivate customers to improve their client computing environments. The offerings are: Proof Of Concept Jumpstart and Production Pilot Jumpstart. Funding for these offerings is available through June 30, 2011.  

Proof of Concept Jumpstart   This offering helps the IT department assess the solution in a non-production environment. This enables customers to understand and gain confidence with the concepts, tools, and techniques before installing the products and migrating the desktop in a production environment.

• 10 day engagement
• Deploy Windows 7, IE8, App-V, and Office 2010
• Funding support for PoC Jumpstart is available through:
  Office Software Assurance Benefits for Desktop Deployment Planning Service (DDPS) – 10-day voucher

For additional information, Microsoft Partners can visit the Microsoft Connect site for PoC Jumpstart: https://connect.microsoft.com/pocjumpstart.

Production Pilot Jumpstart   This offering helps customers conduct an in-depth discovery of requirements and test criteria through a multi-phased pilot that represents a production environment of 500 desktop users. The offering helps customers avoid potential challenges and minimize risk and time spent before rolling out new desktop solutions across the organization.

• 10 weeks, fixed scope and fixed price to deploy 500 seats in production
• Deploy Windows 7, IE8, App-V, and Office 2010

For additional information Microsoft Partners can visit the Microsoft Connect site for the Production Pilot Jumpstart https://connect.microsoft.com/pilotjumpstart.

Sales Scenarios

The following scenarios offer opportunities for customer engagement:

• Currently deployed on Windows® XP or Windows Vista®
• Currently deployed on Microsoft® Office 2007 or earlier
• Expiring Enterprise Agreements
• Enterprise Agreements without Windows Software Assurance
• Enterprise Agreements without Office Software Assurance
• New agreements: Customers without rights to Microsoft® Office 2010
• Upgrade from Windows® 7 Pro to Windows® 7 Enterprise SKU
• Committed to Windows Software Assurance & MDOP but not deployed
• Exploring VDI solution

Additional MPN Resources: Microsoft Partners Only

• MPN webcast for Microsoft Partners only: Demonstrating the Value of Optimized Desktop through Jumpstart Deployment Offerings – Proof of Concept and Production Pilot
• New, sales, marketing and training content for Windows 7 Services Partners
• Microsoft Office System Resources
• Optimized Desktop Campaign in the Partner Marketing Center

In addition, managed partners have access to the Partner Solution Plan Activation Kit (PSP Membership Only).  We are introducing the new Optimized Desktop Partner Solution Plan Activation Kit (PSP Membership Only) and have updated the Virtualization Activation Kit (PSP Membership Only) to include materials supporting the recent Desktop Virtualization launch. (http://www.desktopvirtualizationhour.com/).

We expect these offerings to help Partners drive follow-on services opportunities, including desktop planning and deployment, application compatibility, image engineering, virtualization, and configuration management. Act now and take advantage of these great offerings to grow your business and improve your customer’s computing environment while achieving cost savings! 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjKJ4RFHZtk

Thanks to the following Services Ready partners who participated in this video.

• Lowell Messner  / VP Operations / ProSource Solutions
• Sandy Bateh / SVP / Idea Integration
• Hector Obregon / CEO / emLink
• Hossam Badr / Middle East Director / ITWorx
• Kevin von Keyserling / CEO / Certified Security Solutions
• Scott Gosling / National Practice Manager / MS Services / Data #3
• Niraj Deo / EVP, Global Sales and Operations / Mindteck
• Eric Steinwinder / Alliance Director / Avanade

The SharePoint 2010 Practice Accelerator training and offering content is available at no cost to Microsoft Managed and Services Ready partner consultants who register before May 14, 2010. Training capacity is limited and offered on a first-come, first-serve basis, until training capacity is reached.  Each partner is limited to four registrants.

All free training sessions will be delivered between May 17 and June 28, 2010. All free sessions are  “Virtual Instructor-Led Training” and are delivered remotely by Microsoft SharePoint experts. The training is divided into eight, four hour sessions, delivered over two weeks.

This training is designed for consultants with pre-existing technical product knowledge and industry experience delivering SharePoint projects. The training provides best practices and lessons learned to help consultants efficiently deliver high-value solutions to their customers. Detailed class pre-requisites are described during the registration process. Participants are encouraged to attend the SharePoint 2010 Ignite Online for IT Professionals session prior to attending the SharePoint 2010 Service Offering training.

The scope of the SharePoint 2010 Service Offering and training encompasses six different workloads/offerings. The workloads/offerings are: Platform Services, Portals and Collaboration, Search, Web Content Management, Social Computing, and Business Intelligence. The 16-hour Platform Services class is a pre-requisite for attending any of the five other SharePoint 2010 training sessions.

From a deployment guidance perspective, the offerings include planning, building, and deployment activities for all six workloads/offerings, except Search. The Enterprise Search offering addresses the Planning stage only. For more in-depth information on the scope of the training, click the link to download the SharePoint 2010 Service Offering Training Abstract.

We encourage you can take advantage of this free SharePoint 2010 Practice Accelerator to help drive new business opportunities on SharePoint Server 2010 for your company. Capacity for this free training is limited; contact your Microsoft representative to register for this special offer.

For Data Sheets on the SharePoint 2010 Service Offerings, click on the following links:

Platform Services for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 .

Implementing Business-Critical Functionality for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 .

This training and content is provided under the terms of your Microsoft Partner Network Agreement.

Microsoft developed the Infrastructure Optimization (IO) initiative to support organizations in their quest to improve operational efficiency and better support business activities.

Find tools, training, and a set of best practices that cuts across a wide range of IT support and infrastructure activities. Microsoft Partners can take advantage of key resources to drive understanding and competency around Optimization, including:

• Exclusive access to the IO ROI tool via membership in OSC – Optimization Sales Connection
• Partner Kit to get you started on models and best practices
• Training resources, Solution Planning & Sales resources
• Customer-ready kits

Microsoft provides the most comprehensive portfolio of integrated core infrastructure solutions, enabling you to expand your role as a trusted advisor through deeper customer relationships. Microsoft Core Infrastructure solutions also enable you to deliver increasing business value to your customers through cost savings, productivity gains and improved agility, and to win more business through larger deal sizes, opportunities to expand into new markets, and tools that help you compete more effectively.

Download the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Partner Pathway to Business Performance white paper. 

For detailed information about Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization visit the Optimization Overview page on the Microsoft Partner Sales Resources portal.

For information about Services Ready offerings that leverage the Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization model see the Services Ready FAQ.

There is a large early market demand for SharePoint 2010. In fact, the demand for SharePoint 2010 is larger than the Microsoft Partner Network’s capacity to deliver early in the release cycle. To help meet this demand, Microsoft is offering an exciting opportunity for all existing Services Ready partners to leverage their current Services Ready membership/subscription and jumpstart their SharePoint practice.

Services Ready SharePoint 2010 Promotion Highlights

• All existing Services Ready partners are eligible to take free SharePoint 2010 delivery readiness training.
• Training will be delivered by Microsoft SharePoint subject matter experts and will be accessed remotely by Live Meeting/Teleconferencing.
• Up to 10 consultants from each partner can attend each session.
• Training will be conducted between May 17, 2010 and June 30, 2010.
• Training will consist of 16 hours of Platform Services and 4 hours for each additional offering.
• Service offering content includes both sales and delivery content for all six SharePoint 2010 offerings.
• Training does not include a Microsoft Services co-engagement. Therefore, no Services Ready designation logo will be awarded.
• Offering does not qualify for Area Services Partner Lead support.

Optional Upgrade to Services Ready 2010

Partners who are not currently SharePoint 2010 Services Ready partners can also upgrade to qualify for the full benefits of Services Ready. The upgrade consists of paying a discounted promotional fee. Partners can earn up to four different MPN competencies - Services Ready logos on successful SharePoint 2010 engagements (Portals and Collaboration, Search, Content Management, and BI.)

Specifics

• To qualify for this promotion, a partner must have an active Services Ready subscription for any Service Offering as of February 15, 2010.
• To get the free training and offering content, you must sign up for SharePoint 2010 promotion before May 13, 2010.
• Partners who want to upgrade to Services Ready SharePoint 2010 at a promotional price must sign a Services Ready agreement before June 30, 2010.
• All consultants must attend the core Platform Services training. Attendance at all other training is optional.

Next Step

Contact the Services Partner Lead in your region. They can  provide you with additional information and specifics on how to sign up for this offer.

New to Services Ready? See the Services Ready FAQ.

Customers benefit from the investments and innovation of multiple partners in our open, horizontal ecosystem, and have the flexibility to select the partner products that best meet their specific communications solution needs.  This includes industry standard servers, telephony gateways, and both IP Phone and USB endpoints. 

Here are some highlights of the new partner solutions that support Microsoft Communications Server “14”:

Survivable branch appliances

AudioCodes, Dialogic, Ferrari electronic AG, HP, and NET announced survivable branch appliance products that provide local telephony services for remote offices in the event of a wide area network failure.  These products include integrated PSTN gateway functionality with a variety of densities and interface types, and, like other third party gateways, will be qualified via the Microsoft Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program.  The Open Interoperability Program is intended to help ensure that customers have seamless experiences with the setup, support, and use of a variety of third party products and services with Communications Server.

IP phones

Aastra and Polycom introduced IP phones optimized for Microsoft Communicator “14.”  Customers can now choose common area and information worker phones from both vendors, and conference room phones from Polycom.  Several of the products integrate with Communicator “14” via a simple USB connection to provide streamlined setup, multimedia calling, and desktop control of the phone.  Customers can also take advantage of existing IP, USB, and PC products offered by Polycom, ClearOne, Plantronics, Jabra, Logitech, Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, and others.  These “optimized” endpoints offer a high quality user experience and “just works” installation in a wide variety of form factors and price points. 

Enhanced 9-1-1 call routing services

911 Enable and Intrado announced their plans to provide North American customers with routing services for emergency calls.   These services, together with Communications Server “14,” will provide customers with an innovative, flexible, and cost effective Enhanced 9-1-1 solution.

New contact center and call accounting and recording solutions

Aspect Unified IP and Aspect eWorkforce Management  enhance first call resolution, provide additional contact channels, and easily schedule experts to manage customer inquiries. Quest MessageStats, a message reporting and analysis tool, provides detailed usage information and internal reporting for billing and chargeback purposes through a single interface.  In addition, Nice Systems SmartCenter allows Microsoft Communications Server “14” customers to benefit from real-time, cross-channel interaction analytics to impact customer interactions as they occur and use insights gained to improve their organization’s business performance.

Many of these partners are attending VoiceCon Orlando.  Visit their booths to learn more.

Kristin Murray

Partner Team, Unified Communications

I can’t believe that VoiceCon is already here again.  It seems like yesterday that Gurdeep Singh Pall was on stage encouraging people to compare the relative value of a $300 IP PBX phone that lets people make phone calls from their desks, and a $300 laptop that provides those same people with voice, video, instant messaging, presence, and conferencing nearly anyplace with Internet connectivity. 

On the other hand, it may seem like another life to those many customers that adopted Office Communications Server and transformed both how and where their people work.   We often highlight customer successes, and I particularly like Dimension Data’s story.  Dimension Data wanted to change their culture, and help people communicate using tools other than the telephone and the business trip.  They chose Office Communications Server after testing and piloting offerings from multiple vendors.   What were the results?  49% reduction in travel costs.  Lower conferencing costs.  Enriched communications.  Better work-life balance.  Similar results are reflected in other case studies. 

There has been lots of Microsoft and partner news as well.  In April, we announced the availability of SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Office Communications Online in 19 countries.   In May, HP and Microsoft announced a strategic initiative to deliver end to end communications and collaboration.  In October, we released XMPP capability and simplified our connectivity to public internet messaging services such as AOL and Windows Live.  One thing we didn’t mention in the related PressPass announcement was that, at that time, Microsoft was federated with roughly 1000 organizations, and our customers with uncounted others.   Our federation capability was first released in 2004, and allows encrypted voice, video, IM, presence and application content to be carried in real time over the Internet between different organizations.

We publicly unveiled SharePoint 2010 at the SharePoint Conference (SPC) in October, and followed that with the launch of Exchange 2010 at TechEd Europe in November.  The virtual launch experience is fantastic, the reviews have been great, and customers worldwide are taking advantage of the new capabilities.  In fact, Julia White, Director of Exchange Product Management, used a number of customer examples in her New Year’s Top Ten list.  It’s an excellent post, and capped an exciting year.

Back to the present.  At VoiceCon next week, we’ll have a few familiar elements, and at least one that is out of the ordinary.  First, the familiar.  We have a spot on the show floor and a separate area where we can meet privately with customers, and, of course, Gurdeep will present a keynote on Wednesday.  His keynote is always a highlight of the show for me.

Another highlight for us this year is Allan Sulkin’s annual IP PBX RFP session.  Why would Microsoft participate in an IP PBX session when Office Communications Server offers much more than voice?  Simply put, we wanted to make it easy for telephony and unified communications professionals to compare our voice capabilities to the solutions they’ve traditionally purchased.  We provided a full written response to the RFP based on Microsoft software plus partner infrastructure, endpoints, and services, and I will personally participate on Allan’s vendor panel.  Come to Allan’s session if you’re at VoiceCon, or visit the Communications Server web page to download our response once the show is over.

In addition, we’re participating in the UC Executive Forum and the Communications Architecture plenary sessions on Monday and several breakouts throughout the week.  My colleague, Jamie Stark, will join the “Comparing UC Options:  Who’s Offering What?” and the “Marrying Social Networking and Enterprise Communications” sessions, and our colleague Albert Kooiman will present in “Deep Dive – Implementation Options:   Unified Communications”, “How Much Voice Mail do you really need?”, and “Presence:   Preferences and Rules Drive Communications Effectiveness.” 

An open question is whether we’ll be able to address a challenge that’s been growing since we released the first version of Office Communications Server in 2007.  During the last three years, literally thousands of customers have deployed our product and, as a result, many have PBX and IP PBX phones they no longer need.  What can they do with all those phones?  Some are sold on the gray market and re-used, which is environmentally friendly and greatly improves the PBX phone purchase economics for the buyer.  But we aren’t sure if demand can keep up with supply.  For this reason, we tried to find an alternate use for a few of the phones displaced by Office Communications Server deployments.  I feel pretty good about where we landed. 

Come visit us on the VoiceCon floor from March 22 through March 25 and see for yourself.

BJ Haberkorn

Senior Product Manager, Communications Server

VoiceCon 2010 Orlando

• VoiceCon 2010 Orlando: http://www.voicecon.com/orlando/
• Follow @voicecon on Twitter: http://twitter.com/voicecon
• Use the #VoiceCon hash tag on your VoiceCon tweets

For information on Unified Communication offerings from Services Ready see the Services Ready FAQ.

Note Special thanks to the Microsoft Communications Server team for sharing this content with us. This post was originally published on NextHop in November 2009. The article was written by Linda Wells. Linda is a Senior Technical Writer on the Microsoft Office Communications Server documentation team. In the past, Linda developed documentation for server and network technologies for Microsoft and other software providers, as well as articles for consumer magazines. Linda is currently developing Edge Server documentation for the next release of Microsoft Communications Server.

You’re just getting started with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 planning and deployment. You have lots of questions, need lots of answers, and you want to get it all right the first time. It takes a lot more time and money to do it any other way. How do you know what the right way is, though? With the help of a few key tools, you can reduce the time and money it takes to create and implement a workable plan and help ensure that the results are exactly what they should be. These tools are either available as free downloads from the Microsoft Download Center or can be run directly from the Web site. Table 1 identifies these key tools and where to find them.

Table 1. Finding the right tools

This article provides an overview of each of these tools, their capabilities, and how to use them.

For a list of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 tools and other resources, see Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Clients Downloads at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=167757.

Office Communications Server Resources

• Visit the Office Communications Server main page at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=132607.
• View the complete Office Communications Server documentation library at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=132106.
• Follow tweets from the Office Communications Server team at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=167909.
• Download all the Office Communications Server content as a Word document at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=133609.
• Download all the Office Communications Server content as a compiled help file at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=160355. (Make sure you scroll down to the Additional Information section to download OCSDocumentation.chm.)

Author: Linda Wells
Microsoft Communications Server User Assistance Team

To find more articles from the OCS Team, check out NextHop. NextHop has the latest content from OCS experts at Microsoft and the greater OCS community.

Click here to visit NextHop.

To find out more about OCS offerings from Services Ready read the Services Ready FAQ.

Services Ready Partners attending the event included: infoWAN Datenkommunikation GmbH, LM-IT Services AG, Cancom IT Systeme GmbH, Logica Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG, CONET Solutions GmbH, Querplex GmbH, Plan-B GmbH, maxence solutions GmbH, Unisys Deutschland GmbH, Bechtle Logistik & Service GmbH, and Brainforce.

The agenda included:

• Service Lines Strategy and Alignment – Michael Harzheim
• Services Ready Program Update – Alfons Parovsky
• Enterprise Services Germany – Jutta Behiye Schneider
• MCS Service Line Core-IO – Peter Boeijen
• Microsoft Enterprise Campaigns – Andre Hansel

A primary goal of the first Services Ready Community Meeting was to gather partner feedback to determine how future meetings can best address the needs of the partner community.

Partners placed a high priority on networking. The suggestion was made to add a dedicated networking session the night before the formal meeting. The event will be structured in a way that facilitates an open exchange of ideas and enables partners to network with their fellow Services Ready partners and members of the Microsoft team.

Partners asked for sessions with in-depth participation from Microsoft practice managers and partner account managers.  A suggestion was made for a “who does what” deep dive by an engagement manager.  Another idea was for an exploration of services sales approaches with emphasis on specific product areas.

A pilot activity was initiated by Services Ready partners in Germany. Participating partners will forward their monthly project pipeline and sales to Mark Wittmaier. This information will be consolidated and then shared with the partner community.  This process will enable partners to see how their organization is performing relative to other Services Ready participants.  

Partners were keenly interested in identifying and messaging the benefits-to-the-customer when a partner leverages Services Ready offerings. In response to this request, Services Ready is in the process of dramatically increasing the library of success stories via Case Studies. Click the link to see current Case Studies. Check back over the coming weeks for new releases.   

Thanks to all the partners who attended the first Services Ready Community Meeting. We appreciate your participation, support, and suggestions for improving the Services Ready program. We look forward to working closely with you at our next Community Meeting.

Best Regards,

Mark Wittmaier